Science Association (APSA). “Which one
[class or race] has a stronger impact, and
what impact do they have, on public policy?”
Hero asks. He tries to provide answers in the
next edition.

Hero, a past president of the APSA
(the first Latino to fill that position), is an
author of nine books and numerous scholarly
articles, and a noted speaker throughout the
United States.

Unlike most Americans’ interest in
politics, Hero’s devotion to asking and
answering these tough questions is not limited
to every four years. He sometimes worries
that people focus too much on presidential
elections, and suggests we need to view the
political landscape in a broad, systemic way.

“Presidential elections are fundamentally
important, but it’s a tip of the iceberg,” he
says. “They tend to make issues more specific,
visible, and pointed, but politics is happening
all the time.”

By Kristal Arnold. Photos courtesy of Brian Calfano
and Rodney Hero.

African Americans have become stronger
supporters of the Democratic Party. Whites in
the South, after largely supporting Democrats
until about the 1970s, shifted en masse to
the Republican Party in recent decades. And
Latino support varies based in part on nation
of origin—Cuban Americans tend to vote
Republican, while Mexican Americans and
Puerto Ricans support the Democrats.

Underscoring the importance of this
change is Pew Research Center data showing
the 2016 vote as the most diverse in U.S.
history. Nearly one-third of eligible voters this
year were Hispanic, black, Asian, or another
racial or ethnic minority.

“I’ve written some things that talked
about a post-racial society when Obama
was elected, but it’s fair to say that race has
become more contentious. How to make sense
of that is something I’m still grappling with,”
Hero says.

Hero grew up in Ybor City, historically
the Latin Quarter of Tampa, Florida, founded
by cigar manufacturers in the 1880s. The
factories drew thousands of immigrants, and
among them were Hero’s grandparents on
both sides, cigar makers who emigrated from
Cuba, the Canary Islands, and the Basque
region of Spain.

Despite a global background, Hero’sinterests were domestic. He was intriguedby public affairs, watching the nationalnews regularly as early as age 10. The newsfrom that era—the early 1960s—was ripewith political and social activity, includingfights for civil rights and voting rights. Hefound himself wondering why certain thingswere happening, and he wanted to try tounderstand and “not just be someone whowondered about it.”It was in this spirit that he became thefirst in his family to attend college, earninghis bachelor’s degree in government fromFlorida State University and then pursuingfurther study at Purdue. His graduate workpredated much of the study on race in politics,so he focused his attention predominantly onurban politics at the city and state levels. Hecredits his five years at Purdue with feedinghis interest in the how and why of politicswhile also pointing him toward his specificresearch interests.

“It helped provide a substantiveunderstanding of how to think about andhow to approach and answer what I thoughtwere important questions,” he says. “I lookback and see the seeds of those ideas began toform in some of the groundwork I was layingwithout realizing it.”Hero’s current research is on theintersection of economic and racialinequality. Over the past 10 years, research oneconomic inequality has surged, accordingto Hero, as the importance of race as asocial phenomenon in American politicshas persisted. In “The Racial Structure ofEconomic Inequality in the United States,”an article in this fall’s issue of Social ScienceQuarterly, Hero emphasized that they are bothimportant social factors in American society,but that his research demonstrates that racialinequality actually has a stronger impactthan economic inequality in welfare policyoutcomes at the state level.

That focus also allows a natural transition
to updating his book Faces of Inequality:
Social Diversity in American Politics, another
major project at the moment. First published
in 1998, it won the prestigious Woodrow
Wilson Award from the American Political